Thursday, December 18, 2008

Future of the Web

So what's keeping me awake the past few nights is thinking about what is going to come next. The world was taken by storm from the whole "Web 2.0" craze (or Y2k part 2 if you ask me), but what's key here is that there really *is* a next step in technology.

That next step is Mobile...

I've been a mobile advocate since I learned how to send and receive to my Sony Ericson Z500a about 3-4 years ago. Since then, I started following trends with the new Mobile Web Standards that came out in 2005/06. When the world started seeing that it was possible to design sites around phones, the cell companies started to see a drastic increase in sales. The problem though, was phones just didn't have the resolution, the processor power, nor any other great qualities that made home computers the best user experience for surfing the web. This caused many to think it was just another fad and that mobile web would eventually just go away.

But the happy fact is that it didn't go away, and it has actually started growing faster every single quarter. I think I predicted 2 years ago that 2008/09 would be the year for mobile, and I quite honestly like to think that my prediction is slowly becoming true. Google has released Android (a software development language for building mobile applications FREE) into the T-Mobile network that is being used by the G1 phones. Unfortunately for Google, it *is* with T-Mobile... kind of like the "SAMS cola" of phone services. But still, it was a MAJOR win for mobile devs everywhere.

Then, once the rumors of Android in the wild were out, you started to see a huge hike in production of more finger-friendly keyboards for mobile phones, such as the new Blackberry Storm and the iPhone. Suddenly, mobile was coming back in a REALLY big way.

Now, I honestly think there are companies out there struggling to figure out what to do next. Personally, I think that answer is quite obvious: start building mobile applications. Blackberry is based on Java, so is Android. Android right now is not nearly as big as Blackberry, but I bet you will see it catching up to speed IF (and this is truly an IF) Google sticks with it's guns for continuing development.

What does this have to do with the future of Internet/Web? Everything. Once people start seeing that the market is out there for mobile, they will start wanting more applications like Facebook's awesome mobile app that helps connect them to not only their personal computing internet surfing, but also with their mobile surfing. You're going to see new Advertisement business plans aimed primarily at the mobile community, you're going to see huge leaps in interacting with our documents we normally would be able to maintain on our personal computers. You're also going to see OpenID finally start reaching the masses as mobile will be how they will try to finally sell it to the public. OpenID (a one-login for everything idea) has been sponsored and worked with by the biggest names (IBM, Microsoft, Google, etc), but the online community (for security reasons of course) just don't want one login to tie them to everything. But, if they can say "hey, this way you don't have to have 15 logins for your computer and 15 others for your mobile, just use one with OpenID", they'll have a big selling point...

More than anything else, you're going to see innovation!! Innovation that I've been DYING to see come back to the digital nerds of our planet! I mean, it excites me even RIGHT NOW at how much we can truly do if we just stop being lazy and get out there and do it! The technology is here, and it's just a matter of kicking ourselves in the ass and saying LET'S GO DO IT!